Have Yourself a Deadly Little Christmas

  A YEAR-ROUND CHRISTMAS MYSTERY

  Vicki Delany

  To my family, for giving me many Christmases to remember

  Chapter One

  There are two types of people in the world: those who love picnics and those who hate them.

  The picnic-loving camp can then be divided once again into two further types: those who love winter picnics and those who do not.

  I am firmly in the former camp, in both instances.

  My mother, however, is not, and she reminded me of such as she pulled her scarf tighter around her neck and shivered dramatically. “I am absolutely freezing, Merry. I do not know why this can’t have been arranged for a pleasant, not to mention warm, indoor space. A restaurant preferably.”

  “It’s a super nice day, Mom. Feel that sun on your face.”

  “Nice is a relative term. And the sun is not doing anything to compensate for the temperature.” She rubbed her hands together. “These gloves are not going to be adequate. Dare I hope you have a spare pair on hand?”

  “Sorry. No. Vicky brought mulled cider. A glass of that’ll warm you up.”

  “I could use some help over here, Merry,” Vicky Casey called.

  “Have a good time, Mom,” I said as I escaped for the bakery van where my friend Vicky Casey was beginning the all-important task of unloading the food and drink. “Sorry. Diva emergency.”

  Vicky laughed. “Always takes precedence.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  She indicated the folded red and green plastic tablecloths in her arms and nodded toward two bare picnic tables close by. “Those tables have been set aside for us. Let me lay these cloths, and then we can start arranging everything. Looks like the party’s well underway.”

  The event Victoria’s Bake Shoppe had been hired to cater was indeed well under way in our town park. Men lifted beer bottles glistening with moisture out of the ice-filled cooler close to the previously set-up drinks table, and women poured themselves glasses of wine. Jugs of lemonade and iced tea were on hand for the kids, the non-imbibers, and the designated drivers. My mom joined my dad at the makeshift bar and slipped her arm through his. He gave her a smile that lifted my heart, and asked if he could get her a glass of wine. She nodded graciously.

  My mom might sometimes be “difficult” and my dad “eccentric,” but the love they have for each other forms the bedrock of their lives. Dad was dressed in “civilian” clothes today. What passes as for normal for him, anyway—a plain brown winter jacket above dad-jeans bagging badly in the rear. Mom wore a knee-length camel coat with a fake fur collar and trimmed hood, a double row of ornate gold buttons running down the front, dark brown leather gloves, and a beige wool scarf shot with glistening golden threads. Brown leather boots with two-inch heels were on her feet.

  It was a Sunday afternoon in December and we were at the annual picnic of the Rudolph Community Theater Players. I’m not part of the company, but my friend Vicky Casey had been hired to cater the food and Vicky roped me into helping. I’d left my store, Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, in the capable hands of Chrystal Wong, one of my assistants. At three-thirty, Matterhorn, my Saint Bernard, and I had sprinted down Jingle Bell Lane to start loading Vicky’s bakery van with all the wonderful things she’d prepared for the winter picnic. We sprinted as fast as Matterhorn ever moves, that is. He’s a Saint Bernard, and laid back is the entire nature of his breed. Winter in Upstate New York is his favorite time of year, and at the moment he was resting on the brown grass beneath a giant old willow, being admired by numerous children. Any minute now, I knew, one brave kid would detach herself from the pack and ask if she could have a ride.

  As if.

  Vicky unfolded her tablecloths with a flourish. “Okay, the cider urn can go next to the desserts. I want to set up the sandwiches and the soup on that table, and the hot drinks and desserts on the other. Plates, soup mugs, cutlery, and napkins at the far end. The big plates are for the sandwiches; put the small ones for the desserts next to the cocktail napkins. I brought mugs for the mulled cider and hot chocolate.”

  “Are we bringing dessert out at the same time as the rest?” asked Alan Anderson, who’d also been roped into helping.

  “Yes. Easier that way. Once the food’s laid out, I’ll tell Noel to invite people to serve themselves.”

  I took a large plastic tub containing rows of hefty sandwiches wrapped in butcher paper and tied with twine out of the van to the table as directed while Vicky arranged the urns containing the hot drinks

  Alan grabbed the portable heater that would keep the soup warm. “I hope dinner’s provided for the hardworking crew.” He brushed a lock of overly long blond hair off his forehead and his clear blue eyes twinkled.

  “You wish,” Vicky said with a smile. “Of course it is. I made lots. That’s turning out to be a good thing. Looks like everyone came.”

  “Weather couldn’t be better.” The warm winter sun shone in a brilliant blue sky. The temperature hovered at a few degrees below freezing, with no wind. Perfect conditions to gather outside, as long as everyone had bundled up. As a backup plan in case things turned nasty, the theater company had booked space in the community center, but such hadn’t been needed. Not many people—Mom excepted—complained about taking the party outdoors.

  I lifted the lid off a container and peered in to see rows upon rows of perfect cupcakes, the icing crafted to resemble miniature Christmas trees. “You went all out.”

  Vicky dropped her voice. “I was paid enough.”

  “In past years the picnic’s been potluck in someone’s back yard or basement. Don’t tell me the company’s that flush this year, and the play hasn’t even opened yet?”

  The Rudolph town park sits on the southern shores of Lake Ontario. Farther down the beach, a handful of families had set up portable barbecues and lawn chairs to also enjoy the day. The skating rink was open, and children and adults glided on skates with varying degrees of skill. A baby was being pushed in a specially designed stroller. On the other side of the rink, some of the students from Rudolph High were letting off steam in a rousing game of winter volleyball. There was no snow yet, but the waters of the lake were rimed with a touch of ice and no one dared venture in.

  The theater company had taken over a large patch of ground near the bandstand. Before we arrived, an arrangement of colorful tablecloths had been laid out on picnic tables; lawn chairs set up for those who didn’t want to sit on benches. Huddled in coats and scarves, people mingled and chatted and enjoyed their drinks. A few had gone down to the shoreline to watch the waves, keeping their toes a good distance from the icy water.

  “I’m not being paid by the company, but by the new artistic director.” Vicky nodded to a group of people gathered on the bandstand, watching the festivities, drinks in hand. Rudolph calls itself a Year-Round Christmas destination, and to that aim the tree at the center of the bandstand is refreshed with a live one once a month. This year’s holiday season’s tree was a twenty-foot-tall Fraser fir, adorned with countless gold and red orbs, some as big as soccer balls, some smaller than a golf ball. Colored lights draped over every branch lit up the gloaming. At four-thirty in the afternoon in early December, it would be dark soon.

  “She’s paying for this shindig out of her own pocket,” Vicky added.

  “Who’s that?” Alan asked.

  Vicky turned to him with an expression of shock. “You haven’t heard? Everyone in town is talking about little else.”

  Alan shrugged as he opened the lid of the next container and peered in. “Oh, good. Vicky’s famous gingerbread.”

  “Alan’s never one for town gossip,” I said. “Don’t forget this is his busiest time of year. Gotta get all those toys ready for Santa to put under trees around the world. I’m surprised he agreed to help out tonight.” Alan was a woodworker. He made many of the items stocked at Mrs. Claus’s and at gift and toy stores all over this part of the state. In the lead-up to the Christmas season, he concentrated on toys and Christmas décor items such as candlesticks and ornaments; the rest of the year, he made furniture, gorgeous hand-crafted pieces that cost a heck of a lot and were worth every penny. As were his toys—made not only by his hands in his own workshop, often with wood he gathered on his own property, but with love. Alan also served as Santa’s head toymaker at public events, standing by his side in a calf-length coat, waistcoat, breeches, and shoes with silver buckles, recording children’s wishes on a long roll of paper with a feather-topped pen. Santa, by the way, is my own dad, Noel Wilkinson.

  “I agreed at the mention of gingerbread,” Alan said.

  I laughed and gave him a hug. He kissed the top of my head. As well as furniture crafter, toymaker, and Santa’s helper, Alan Anderson is also the love of my life.

  “Catherine Renshaw,” Vicky said. “That’s her on the bandstand in the blue coat and matching hat and gloves, talking to the mayor. She’s the new artistic director of the company.”

  “Don’t know that name,” he said.

  The woman under discussion was in her early sixties, perhaps late sixties if she’d had some work done. She was of average height, wealthy New Yorker-thin, dressed in a cashmere-and-wool coat short enough to show off loose black slacks and ankle boots with three-inch heels. Brown hair with caramel highlights was tucked under a hat matching her coat. She held a wine glass in a gloved hand and waved the other hand in Sue-Ann

e Morrow’s face. They were too far away for us to hear what was being said.

  “Newcomers,” Vicky explained as she made a last-minute adjustment to the napkins and I laid out mugs next to the urns of mulled cider and hot chocolate. “Tons of money, or so people say. They bought that big house on the lake where the old McNamara place had been, and they moved in over the summer.”

  “Oh,” Alan said, “that house. Gigantic, ostentatious, totally out of place. A French chateau dropped into the center of Rudolph.”

  “Yup. That one. As a way of getting involved in her new community, Catherine volunteered with the theater group. Conveniently, Ron Fitzpatrick, who used to be in charge, although he never gave himself a fancy title like artistic director, declared his intention to quit over the summer, on the grounds of wanting to spend more time in California with the grandkids. Whereupon Catherine swooped in and took the job. Helped that no one else wanted it. Also helps that she’s prepared to spend lavishly on this year’s production. She’s picking up the entire bill for this party, thus it’s not a potluck in someone’s basement.”

  “George Mann was told his homemade wine would not be needed this year,” I said. “Mom told me he took that as a personal insult.” As one, we turned to watch the not-happy-looking man standing on his own at the edge of the festivities, dressed in a tattered and faded jacket over a plaid shirt, jeans, and boots, all of which were weary with years of wear. George himself showed signs of years of wear, most of them spent outside winter and summer. He clutched a bottle of beer in a hand scarred from a lifetime spent on a farm. He looked as though he might not have bothered to have a shower and change before coming to the party after mucking out the barn.

  “You seem to know a lot about the goings-on,” Alan said to Vicky.

  “Even from behind the scenes at my place, I hear plenty of the gossip.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” Rachel McIntosh asked. Rachel and her husband, Ian, owned Candy Cane Sweets, and the red- and white-striped shirt, red pants, and candy cane necklace she wore to work was visible under her open coat.

  “Thanks, but we’re good here,” Vicky said.

  “Is Ian in the play again this year?” I asked Rachel.

  Her face tightened into an expression I couldn’t read. “Starring role. Ebenezer Scrooge himself.”

  “That’s good,” Vicky said. “Everyone says a big part of the reason last year’s play didn’t do very well was because Ian had to drop out at the last minute.”

  Rachel shrugged.

  “Everything okay?” I asked her.

  She gave me a tight smile. “Perfectly fine. Thank you for asking, Merry. As you have everything under control, I see Irene over there. Haven’t spoken to her in ages. Excuse me.”

  She slipped away and we finished setting up. Guests were already helping themselves to the cider, and the hot spicy scent of warm apples and cinnamon and nutmeg drifted on the air.

  “I know just about everyone here,” I said. “But who’s that guy? The one on the bandstand, talking to Catherine and Sue-Anne?”

  Vicky looked over. “Younger than most of this crowd. Nice hair.” The man in question did have nice hair: thick, black locks curling slightly around his ears. He was around forty, slightly over six feet tall. As we watched, he laughed heartily at something Catherine said, displaying dazzling white teeth. He was, from this distance anyway, quite handsome and the cut of his winter coat hinted at a broad chest and shoulders underneath. “I haven’t met him, but that must be Dave French.”

  “French? Is he related to the owners of the Carolers’ Motel?”

  “Yes. Lloyd French had a stroke over the summer, and his son’s come to help run the motel. He’s divorced, or so the female staff at my place say. Not bad looking.”

  “Is he?” I said with a sideways grin at Alan. “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “I saw Lloyd talking to Noel when I drove up,” Alan said. “I’d heard about his heart problems and I thought he didn’t look at all well. I was surprised to see him here, as I wouldn’t have thought the theater was an interest of his, but maybe he came at his son’s suggestion.”

  “I can keep an eye on things now,” Vicky said. “You two go and enjoy yourselves.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Alan said. I did too.

  People didn’t need to be invited before they started drifting toward the food tables. Vicky had outdone herself, as she usually did, with hearty roast beef and homemade mustard on mini-baguettes, salmon and egg salad on thinly sliced white bread, and roasted red peppers and mushrooms on whole wheat rolls, along with a tureen of bright orange butternut squash soup made with the last of the season’s fresh vegetables. And the desserts, of course—Vicky’s justifiably famous gingerbread (a Rudolph Christmas tradition), coconut cupcakes, and glistening fruit tarts.

  As previously arranged, my dad kept his eye on Vicky, and when she judged everything was to her satisfaction, she gave him a nod. He stood next to the food tables and announced, in the voice Santa Claus uses to guide the reindeer through a thunderstorm, that Mrs. Catherine Renshaw would like to say a few words.

  Catherine descended the steps from the bandstand, smiling and waving, like Mrs. Claus on the back of the sled in the parade. Our mayor, Sue-Anne Morrow, isn’t exactly a shy, retiring woman, but on this occasion she fell back to allow Catherine to be the center of attention. A man, whom I took to be Catherine’s husband, walked slightly behind her. He was a reasonably attractive guy, about her age, just under six feet tall, with strong cheekbones, a sweep of thick silver hair, and light brown eyes.

  Catherine graciously thanked Dad, and made a joke about finally meeting Santa Claus in her “old age,” to which we all laughed politely. She then simply invited everyone to enjoy themselves, and they needed no further encouragement to dig in.

  About fifty people were attending the picnic: the cast and crew of the Rudolph Community Theater Players and their families, along with donors and other supporters, and local celebrities such as the mayor and her husband. They were a fairly polite bunch, and they lined up at the food table, everyone telling everyone else to “Please, go ahead.” I’d known most of these faces my whole life. Friends of my parents or of one of my siblings, town councilors from Dad’s time as mayor, mothers and fathers of my mom’s vocal students, former classmates of Vicky and me, members of Vicky’s huge extended family, and volunteers with one committee or another, always dropping into our house to discuss strategy or budgets. Most of them were in their fifties or sixties, but a scattering of younger people had joined them, including parents of the kids diving headfirst into the food offerings.

  Even my shop assistant, Jackie O’Reilly, was here. She’d told me, more than once, that she was an extra in the production although she was hoping that once the director saw how good she was, he’d give her a speaking part. Jackie’s boyfriend, Kyle Lambert, had earlier been taking pictures for the local paper, as well as helping himself several times to the beer. He’d abandoned photography in favor of getting first in line for the food.

  “Now there’s a couple of folks I didn’t expect to see,” my dad said to me. I turned and looked in the direction he was facing. Two heavyset men were picking their way across the winter-brown lawn, both bundled up in heavy coats, gloves, and scarves. They had huge smiles on their plump round faces, jowls jiggling, hands extended. They greeted people loudly as they waded into the group.

  “Politicians or real estate agents? Alan asked.

  Dad chuckled. “One of each. The bigger one’s Randy Baumgartner, mayor of Muddle Harbor, and the other fellow’s John Benedict, owner of the biggest real estate office in these parts, outside of Rudolph, that is.” Muddle Harbor was the neighboring town.

  “Shall I set loose the hounds, Noel?” Vicky asked.

  For a moment I was confused and glanced quickly to where Mattie, which is what I usually call Matterhorn, was comfortably stretched out on the grass, eyes closed, breathing deeply. My dad chuckled, and I realized it had been a rhetorical question.

  “All are welcome to join us to celebrate the season of joy, isn’t that what we say in Rudolph?” Dad said.

  “I could make exceptions,” Vicky said.